Do you know that you must keep your battery charged?

[dpeilow]

Come come now, don't be modest.

Credit Report Scrub: As Promised, the Scrub's "Intelligence Report" on Max Drucker, CEO of Social Intelligence Corporation

The Santa Barbara Independent Role Mother


Perhaps he should have used his own super searching skills to search the manual?

[TEG]

"Reap what you sow."
"Goes around comes around."
...sigh...

[PV4EV]

As has been pointed out numerous times on this forum, 53kWh of energy is an enormous amount. Compare with a gas tank.

Yes it is, but an average ICE car has 16 gallons of highly explosive fuel in it which can explode far more violently than an EV pack might.

One US gallon of Gas/Petrol contains approx 13 x 10^7 Joules of energy, or about 33 KwH per gallon..

So a typical gas tank holds 530 KwH of energy …. Yet people are quite happy to drive around with this much highly explosive gas energy next to them and accept the risk, despite the dire consequences if it lets rip.



Also, its worth pointing out that storing all forms of energy has risks, and all energy tends to 'leak' away slowly with time, no matter what it is. There is no perfect solution for this.

For example, Petrol can EVAPORATE if the owner is careless and doesn’t read the manual about putting the fuel cap back on… this is comparable to neglecting to plug your EV in.


And Petrol and Diesel also have a shelf life measured in months. Over time it will degrade to the point it will cause significant internal engine problems if then used, as well as other issues due to sitting still in fuel lines for months. Sorting this out will cost money, no different to letting an EV pack discharge to 0%.

[JRP3]

Jrp3, yep we're going round in circles and back to the Volt example of an idle cell short circuiting and causing a runaway fire. Part of the solution for the volt was to add more monitoring (and presumably active actions in the event of a monitoring alert, otherwise what is the point of adding the monitoring).

To appease regulators and the public? No monitor, or anything, can stop a single short circuited cell from discharging until empty or the short circuit is removed. GM made it less likely that a cell can be shorted but did nothing to change what will happen if a cell is short circuited.

It is not as simple as
If (socp<3) system('shutdown now');

Why not? If the other choice is keep the pack hooked up and kill it, or disconnect the pack and possibly save it, I'll choose the latter. Once the pack is completely dead it can't support active monitoring or management anyway.

No-one outside Tesla knows the choices made on the Model S or X, with their redesigned battery pack.

Indeed, and they may have done exactly as I'm suggesting.

[tdelta1000]

Why would someone would want to "brick" their EV? It sound like negligence on the part of the owner for not properly maintaining their car.

I would think that TM and many other have put in steps to keep their car from completely discharging if left sitting for more that two months... But I keep going back to why would anyone allow their investment to sit that long without being connected to a source of energy?

[eledille]

You wouldn't say that if you were sitting in Florida. In Norway you don't have to worry about >100F temperatures damaging your batteries. I can control whether my car is plugged in or not, I can't control the weather.

Sorry, I should have written "if the car has been standing still for x weeks, is not plugged in, and the battery has a low SoC, I think it would be wise to turn everything off before it dies."

If the SoC is slowly approaching the point of no return, then shortened cell life due to high temperature is the least of your worries!

[eledille]

Part of the solution for the volt was to add more monitoring (and presumably active actions in the event of a monitoring alert, otherwise what is the point of adding the monitoring).

So what would you do if you detected a shorted cell? Disconnecting it will not help, you can't disconnect a cell from itself. There is energy stored inside of it, and physical damage can release it no matter what you do.

It is my understanding that the Roadster battery pack already disconnects itself from the car when it detects a crash or other critical condition. If the firmware decides that it's time to hibernate, then it can just run the disconnect routine before going to sleep. There is nothing more you can do to protect against physical pack damage anyway. As discussed previously, a thermal runaway does not happen except during overload, overcharge or extreme heat well above 100 degrees C.

[Larry Chanin]

Why would someone would want to "brick" their EV? It sound like negligence on the part of the owner for not properly maintaining their car.

There seems to be an ingrained arrogance and fundamental lack ofresponsibility demonstrated by Mr. Drucker's chosen course of action. Perhaps he naively thought he could threaten bad public relations for Tesla through a surrogate with impunity without incurring any repercussions to his own professional reputation. Apparently hubris prevented him from realizing that publicizing his failure to take responsibility for his actions, as well as his laziness and ineptitude in failing to read and understand the materials provided to him, would adversely impact his professional credibility. These are not leadership traits to be admired, especially for someone who claims to have a grasp of technology and is supposed to be functioning as a CEO of a technology company.

Larry

[daniel]

I think there is reason on both sides: If the car is unplugged and the SoC is too low, it makes sense to shut down systems as an added bit of idiot-proofing, people being what they are. But I cannot imagine any situation where I would leave my car unplugged for more than a day or so. This is a very special car and requires special care. Part of that care is planning trips so that the car can always be plugged in. A trip that would take the car to someplace there are no plugs, arriving at a low SoC, is not an appropriate trip for the Roadster. Similarly, storage where there is no plug is not an appropriate way of storage. You wouldn't spend ten thousand dollars on an Italian tailored suit and then leave it in a paper bag on the street on a rainy day. Well, you don't spend $100K+ on a high-performance electric sports car and then store it where it cannot be plugged in. But, some added idiot-proofing never hurts.

Every car requires certain kinds of care. EVs require plugging in. Arguments about the relative consequences of negligence on different kinds of cars are only relevant if you plan on being negligent, or are too irresponsible to take proper care of your possessions.

[efusco]

I'm beginning to think we don't have a very imaginative crowd here. I've seen a bunch of people post that they "can't imagine a time they wouldn't have the car plugged in". Now look, stuff happen in this word that is not predictible. Perhaps all these folks have lived perfect lives where nothing unexpected or untoward occured, but for the rest of us still on planet earth..."Stuff" happens. Perhaps you'll become stranded in a foreign country during a coup and you kid inadvertantly unplugs the car, or the breaker is thrown while you're away. Perhaps you'll be injured in an accident. Perhaps you'll be going through a divorce and your spouse leaves the vehicle unplugged. Here in the Ozarks we had a severe ice storm a few years ago that had people out of power in some areas for over 3-4 weeks. Maybe you loan the car to someone and they didn't read the manual or sign the contract and didn't have it plugged in properly.

At one time there were only a couple thousand Priuses on the roads in the US, those owners knew every single in and out of those vehicles. Now there are over a million on the roads around the workld and well over 1/2 million in the US. the general knowledge level about the cars has declined and we see a ton of "basic" questions about function of the vehicle. Tesla is determined to go forward into the mass markets with the S, X and Bluestar. They HAVE to think about the lowest common denominator and the unusual/rare circumstances and have a means for the vehicle to put itself in to "life Preserving" mode when the SOC gets to a critical level so as to not allow any further unnecessary drain. it might require a complex and expensive (relatively) reboot and recharge to recover, but this brave new world of EV drivers is NOT going to accept that they have to pay for a $30k battery just b/c they inadvertantly or accidently didn't keep the vehicle charged.

Again, with Prius, toyota did an amazing job of making the battery idiot proof (yes I know, very different technology), but it is a near impossibility to brick that pack, even if you let the car sit unused for 6 months (NiMH--which an earlier poster said was one of the worst for self discharge I believe). It can't/won't die if the car is in Ready mode, it disconnects in any other mode. It is just logical to build in some fail safes to protect the single most expensive and important component in the vehicle, IMO.

None of this is to say that the owner doesn't have an obligation to care for and maintain the vehicle properly, they absolutely do, and I don't think Drucker has a case here at all. But Tesla needs to do their due diligence to anticipate and try to build in fail safe measures too.